Harmony Systems, Inc. announced the worldwide availability of Delora rsTouch Pro, a major upgrade to their iPad application that provides control surface functionality for the Propellerhead Reason music application on a Mac or PC. rsTouch Pro adds support for Reason Device Rack editing and a new ‘perform’ mode for sending MIDI to Reason instrument tracks.

rsTouch Pro works with Reason 6.5 or higher or Reason Essentials 1.5 installed on a Mac or Windows PC. It supports either “wired” MIDI connections using an iPad compatible USB MIDI interface, or “wireless” MIDI connections using iOS compatible network MIDI. Reason control surface support files are required and are available free from the Delora website, www.delora.com.

Features & Benefits

Control 40+ built-in Reason synthesizer, mixer, effects & utility devices using customized screens optimized for iPad use. Use the new keyboard and drum pad layouts to play Reason synths and drum machines, or to record into a sequencer track.

rsTouch Pro builds upon its existing support of Reason’s Mixer and transport functions. Record and mix songs, and make sound setting and level adjustments easily with large, multi-touch, color-coded rotaries and faders. Edit send effects, insert parameters, and EQ settings, as well as adjust channel, pan and dynamics levels. A dedicated Master screen allows full adjustments of Reason’s Main Mixer Master section.

Pricing & Availability

rsTouch Pro is available at a special sale price of $9.99 (USD) through December 29 on the iTunes App Store, and is a free upgrade for current rsTouch users.

Roger dropped by the office to give us a sneak peek of his great LinnStrument prototype. The LinnStrument is triggering our Prophet 12 Module prototype as the sound source. This is not the final design or form factor of the LinnStrument, but it was fun to see it in action and play around with it. It is extremely intuitive and expressive. Can’t wait for the production model!
More info here: http://www.rogerlinndesign.com/previe…

The heart of LinnStrument is a pressure-sensitive multi-touch surface scanned at high speed and resolution. Each touch is sensed in three dimensions with loudness controlled by pressure, pitch controlled by left-right movement and timbre controlled by forward-backward movement. We call this 3D Note Expression. It’s also polyphonic, with these three dimensions captured independently and simultaneously for all fingers. With this level of subtle control, you’ll find little use for envelope generators or LFOs because your finger movements do a better job of controlling a note’s envelope, vibrato, pitch slides, tremolo, bends and other musical gestures, just like on acoustic instruments. And because these three dimensions are sensed for each finger simultaneously, you can do things like performing a string quartet with four fingers.

i connected an iRig MIDI to my iPad with the microTone running. The MIDI signal goes via audio/MIDI interface into my computer where the data is parsed by osynth.

the microTone:
– control one octave fluently without steps. Just glide over the keyboard with up to 10 fingers!
– switch octaves or lowest/highest notes
– the microTone has an integrated polyphonic synthesizer with 8 different sound presets
– send pitch data over MIDI cable to your computer
– send pitch data over WiFi to your computer (receive MIDI or OSC data with e.g. max/MSP or OSCulator)
– receive microTone MIDI or OSC data with osynth: a free synthesizer, made for the microTone.

Introducing Base: a new foundation for all your creative productions. Combining the technology of drum machines and touch screens, Base delivers a sleek new pressure-sensitive surface that doubles up the MPC’s fabled 16 pads and opens up your hands to freely mix. With 32 pressure-sensitive pads, nine touch sliders, eight touch-sensitive buttons, and eight momentary buttons there’s plenty of controls to play and control your set. Illuminated throughout with RGB lights and a simple character display, Base provides plenty of novel ways to give you feedback for playing drums, synths, loops, step sequencing, changing presets, and even navigating your set. Customize all the settings and internal presets using the Base Editor web application to best fit your workflow with your favorite DAW, VST, plugin, or application.

The Kontrol Surface is a touch controller device. In its Light version, it’s an X/Y touch controller with CV output. The Pro version adds MIDI so it works with both analog and digital gear, and ups the ante to three-axis X/Y/Z capacitive touch, here’s what KOMA has to say about it:

New developments at the KOMA Elektronik workspace! Yes, you thought the KOMMANDER was cool, look at what’s cooking in our kitchen:

This is the first prototype of our new product: the KONTROL SURFACE! A 2-axis touch screen controller! As of now for each channel (X and Y) has:

– 1 x CV output
– 1 x inverted CV output
– Manual gate output

Each channel also has a hold function, so it will hold the current CV value as soon as the hold button is pressed. Not yet implemented but in development is a sort of ‘momentary/clocked hold function’, that means that a value is only taken and processed according to a provided external clock signal OR without a clock signal attached only when there are changes in the values, so you could lift of your finger from the pad, it will hold the value and as soon as you touch the controller on another point it will start processing again and so on and so forth…

Furthermore we are going to make the Kontrol Surface into a ‘Light’ and a ‘Pro’ version. The light version will have all the functionalities as written above and as you can see in the video. The ‘Pro’ version will have a third axis, which is a capacitive sensor underneath the touch controller measuring the amount of surface covered, i.e. the third dimension (Z). Also the ‘Pro’ version will be equipped with MIDI functionality, so it can literally control everything!

Both units will be on display and ready for a thorough test drive at NAMM 2013 and will be shipping in the end of Q1 of 2013!